Recommend a linux distro?

[felice]

I've been using Ubuntu for a long time, but I haven't liked the direction it's been going in recent years. I hate the Dash; while typing the name to run a program can be nice, it's a lot more of a hassle if you're not sure exactly what you're looking for, where an old style menu is much more convenient. And it's useless for searching for files, and I definitely don't like it searching the internet for anything - if I want to search online, I use a web browser. I hate the way it moves application menus to the top of the screen for non-maximised windows. And configuration options seem to be a lot more limited than they used to be; while making things simple and user-friendly is good, it shouldn't come at the expense of removing more advanced options entirely.

Can anyone recommend a good alternative? I'm looking for something usable rather than open-source purist (eg including proprietary video codecs), that allows for updating to new versions without doing a fresh install, and is reasonably popular/well supported.

[Altherion]

I use Fedora with the Cinnamon desktop. It basically works out to a UNIX version of Windows 7 (or, really, any other version before 8) and is also very similar to Gnome 2. In other words, it's what most operating systems looked like before the coming of Windows 8, Unity and Gnome 3 (which I personally cannot stand because they make it difficult to make any work done).

If you like the substructure of Ubuntu and the only thing annoying you is the interface, you can install the Cinnamon desktop on top of what you already have and it will probably work fine. There is also a variety of other interfaces that bring back the classic operating system and can be installed in the same way. I've tried MATE which is quite similar to Cinnamon and also XFCE which results in a similarly classic interface (but not much else out-of-the-box -- you would need to install many programs on your own). MATE probably works even better with Ubuntu since there appears to be a dedicated release that just came out a month ago.

If you want to try something other than Ubuntu, but stay within reasonably popular and well-supported alternatives, here is a list of the usual suspects. Of these, I've personally tried Fedora, RHEL (which is called Centos on the linked page), openSUSE and I guess Mageia back when it was still called Mandriva. However, keep in mind that my needs tend towards scientific computing (which in Linux generally means enterprise features). For non-enterprise users, I would recommend Mint which comes with Cinnamon and MATE out-of-the-box. Fedora is also pretty good, but you have to get basically anything other than the default Gnome 3 shell and a few proprietary programs need to be installed separately (the base distribution is open-source, but closed-source stuff is easy to install afterwards).

Short version: install either Cinnamon or MATE on top of Ubuntu or, if you're tired of Ubuntu, give Mint a try.

[Civility Reigns]

I like to use Lubuntu, Ubuntu with LXDE. It's lightweight, fast, and has access to all of Ubuntu's software and driver repositories.

If the issue is just the desktop environment, you should be able to install your DEs of choice and switch between them on the log in screen. No need to switch distros just yet.

[Serious Callers Only]

I use gnome 3 ubuntu, but to me it sounds like you're looking for mint.

[felice]

Thanks for the suggestions 8) Looks like Mint is probably the way to go; I need to get a new computer, and since I'm doing a fresh install anyway, it's a good time to try an entirely different distro rather than just a new DE.

[Yagathai]

Because I am stuck forever in 1999, my vote is for Slackware.

[Inigima]

Slackware is the first Linux distribution I ever installed or used.

Not that that's what's being asked here, but I can't say I recommend it as a first distribution.